URBAN FRAGMENTS

Foreign Experts

Jenny Rowe

 

 

There was that second time in Beijing

When you pointed at my airplane ticket

Flared your arms out like an albatross

Growled in the back of your throat nrrrrrrrrr

And jumped out of the cab, leaving me

To survey my belongings for a sharp object

Unsure of the driver with the rheumy cough

 

And that time we sipped murky tea in Vang Vieng

The too-bright scooters’ lights leading us back to our hostel

Where we giggled at the pool’s ultraviolet blue

Where you rolled on my bed like an upturned beetle

Shouting I don’t know what anything is over and over

While I stared, helpless, at a small white string

Making the most beautiful shadow puppets in the fan-breeze

 

Then we watched the Kep swallows

Diving for the same chirping insects

The geckos waited for in the porch light

And mused on the Old World, as you called it

The one where I’d been married

Where you nearly OD’d on Klonapin

Where neither of us knew anything

 

Now I fall asleep in the backseats of strangers’ cars

No seatbelt, weightless in airborne exhaustion

The sweet stink of durian in the alley market signaling I’m home

And deep in folds of brain tissue

A memory resurfaces of you in a shitty college bar

Grinning wolf-like as I drain one shot too many

Saying Have you had enough yet

 

 

 

 

The city welcomed me to an unlikely soundtrack

Tara Doolabh

 

 

The city welcomed me to an unlikely soundtrack: ‘Hotel California’ sung tunelessly by my taxi driver. In between the choruses he’d chat enthusiastically at me in Chinese whilst I returned a shapeless half-sound, neither Chinese nor English, from the back seat. I found I could cling to the strangest things when I first arrived. To start with it was the plastic M&S food hall bag I’d caught sight of in the queue to immigration. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, something in the remove of that crinkled black logo under the clinical lights of authority, travelled so far. It was then that I started thinking of myself as being far from home, a phrase I’d thought reserved for Paddington Bear or a toddler that had waddled too far from its pram in the park. Suddenly, I was staring searchingly into crowds at the Wudaokou intersection, tracing swathes of faces with my eyes because I needed to share a smile with someone as lost as I was. I wanted to cram into that empty smile the weight of my uncertainty because portioning out your fear with a twisted lip is better than swallowing it whole.

 

In those early months the dose of novelty and leftover heat was strong enough to distract me from the daily ritual of nodding wordlessly in shops and taxis and bars and banks. And just as that too began to wear off I learnt Chinese words to marry my hopeless gestures.  Eventually I could walk with all the swagger of someone with a pocketed phone, knowing exactly where the streets would fold into each other. By the end, the hutongs a patchwork quilt in the mind, the seams messily stitched together by Soju hazes, impulsive tuk-tuk rides and thrice taken wrong turns. Charmless without its chaos. If I could I’d delicately embroider over it with the cold, quickened footsteps of tourists through a Beijing January. There’d be an inky blue thread to lead you between the tiled rooftops that cradled us from short spring to summer.

 

On that ride from the airport, tentatively accepting the black-toothed grin of the taxi driver, I’d quietly been thinking to myself, just like the Eagles, this could be heaven or this could be hell. By warm July I had my answer. Leaving was like desperately trying to collect crumbs with wet fingertips, like losing the taste of something sweet and knowing it.

 

 

 

 

Among Others

Edward Ragg

 

 

Beneath the earth

in corridors

 

in which only

the busker or

 

beggar pauses…

 

To play for a song

or lie prostrate:

 

the jigging wrist,

stoop of the kow-tow

 

which remains

unwatched beneath

 

the ineluctable percussion

of determined feet.

 

Until

they are moved on.

 

Movement, which may

be a cure of happiness.

 

In the city’s final covering

more hidden than

 

the subway’s transfers,

at least less visible,

 

yet before our eyes.

 

Here, at last, I feel

among others:

 

millions who wear

the tunnels of Beijing

 

and that they now exist

as so many hours

 

from now, prised

 

from the subway cars,

 

I will return

to your original face.

 

 

 

 

Beijing Fiddle

Sara F. Costa

 

 

they were burning your fiddle

in the crossroads.

you invited me to go to the opera

and I told you that

i love the comfort of disliking any place

just as much as i love the traffic

and the smoke.

winters are dry but

there’s nothing as dry

as this poem

and still you can get drunk from it.

i think i heard your footsteps

in my didi driver’s spit

so i got ready to fight.

i purchased my weapons on taobao

it was November 11,

my hate was on sale.

the landlord kicked me out of my soul

my point is

i know that this man is upset,

people won’t give him five starts

It’s winter again and

somebody needs to save the world.

you got out with your friends

Red, black and white masks

a jinghu soundtrack, a lo-fi beat

“Dear all,

our performance is going to take place tonight

please come and save us”.

 

 

 

 

Beijing, take me in

Pieter Velghe

 

 

This place, made up of millions

Of dreams and hopes immaterial

Of songs and cries that travel

With me as I hover through these streets

 

The people are engaged, bustling with

Forthright antennas and wires peering out

Scooting flying buzzing around as an

Irresistable pull draws us closer constantly

 

The city is organic - as it breaths

we breath with it, as it reeks

we reek with it, as it sweats we all

dissolve into tiny puddles of madness

 

The city looks at me and sees me

For who I really am, it knows

There is no hiding in your company

I offer my surrender to thrive with you

 

The city radiates and communicates in

The stories carved and painted on the pavement

And in the advertisements that wail at me

And in this visceral web I enmesh myself in

 

I am alive in this place where yours and

Mine experience melt together to form

A unique concurrence of which

I can see the ripples all around me

 

In the couples parading down nanluoguxiang,

In the arguments of the old folk on the street,

In casual conversation and in new encounters

They ignite me, soothe me

 

I am alive in this place where neurotic

Meets tradition, where dissonance

Meets consonance, and where

Every connection is always borderline

 

Of all the friends and the strangers

And the strangers who became friends

Woven together in a murky tale of 

Whirlwind, comradery and ecstacy

 

Beijing and its little compartments of

Opportunity, thrill, sadness and glee

All linked up and coupled together

Coalescing into an awesome embrace

 

Beijing grinds on me till I have enough

But still I can never get enough

An awesome embrace

With which I will never part

 

 

 

 

This City       

Michael Burton

 

 

This city will not sleep ‘til its

outstretched fingers meet, ‘till its

towers drown its clifftops, and the

light stamps out the darkness of the

farmyards in retreat. This city

will not sleep ‘till its

borders skirt the seas, ‘till its

net is the only the intersect

connecting every street. This city

will not sleep ‘till

forests free its trees, ‘till

fountains drip the rivers dry, ‘till

savannas swell concrete. This city

will not sleep ‘till breath

bleeds black the sky, ‘till

it, the only star to shine, sits

crystal and complete. This city

will not sleep ‘till it

beats from every heart, ‘till it

pounds out to planets a

galaxy apart. This city

will not sleep ‘till

we, its sprawling fleet, thunderously

heat the heels of our

charging, marching feet. This city

will not sleep. No, this city

will not sleep.

 

 

 

 

Poem 2: For whom is Beijing even for?

Jiarong Chen

 

 

Cold noodle stall-owners reminiscing the true spicy rice-noodles from his home village

Korean Samsung workers complaining about unauthentic wangjing Korean barbecue

Chinese Southerners dissing the excess dryness in the air

Westerners shunning delivery motorcycles for life as if playing dodgeball

 

For whom is Beijing even for?

For artist, it’s fragments of post-modern confusion and pre-modern vulgarity

For merchants, it’s fragments of a young-dominated easy market and mutually protective capitalist upper-middle living in Eastern districts

For common people, it’s the possibility of social climbing underneath the pollution

The probability of relation-building underneath the top-down scorns

The glimpse of hope, a platform for minimal ambition

 

For whom is Beijing for?

 

It’s built for those who never owned it’s piece

For those that loathed its materialistic cruelty

For the collective eagerness for an equally ordinary future in an unnaturally expanding economy

For the immense hopelessness swelling from underground overly wet dwellings

For those that came and left, but never truly tasted the fruit of the system.

 

Within Beijing

There is system that never shares its fruit to anyone not born within

There is a wild palace that settles the sidelined marginalised

 

 

 

 

美式咖啡

David Huntington

 

 

Starbucks!

Again.

 

But first the smallness—

Let me tell you of the pucker

 

of an atom in my heart

again, how it is everything:

 

The whirly-burly trees

out Starbucks’ bay window—

 

How they are everything.

In Beijing’s Sanlitun, Howard Schultz’s

 

and my uncle’s stocks both profit

from the shimmering green coinage of

 

Communist leaves

all uniquely tumultuous

 

in the wind’s unimpeachable governance.

But then it’s almost small enough to love,

 

this profit—how we share

in its atomic plight.

 

So close to nothing!

To evading guilt

 

by association

with all these potential

 

pawnshops for souls.

A toast for the masses:

 

Whose faces flash like gold doubloons:

We were almost small enough.

 

Now the best we can do

is blame it on the wind;

 

sit in Starbucks, again:

Invest our time in fate.

 

 

 

 

[Part of me]

Lebogang Lebese

 

 

Down in the hutongs

Hunting for meaning

My neighbors I hear them

Again they be screaming

At the TV

The laowai

The kids with the wheelies

Its summertime

A beijing bikini to soothe the sweat in your skin

Be careful the baijiu

Don’t let it drink you

 

 

 

 

singhua/wudaokou 

Jonathan Chan

 

willows, drooping green, adorn concrete roads.
harried obike streams, deftly scooters weave
between clueless feet. infused splash of red
scattering across pallid thunderstorms.
tongues contort and fold english syllables.
fawning visitors, lurid gaokao dreams,
royal caverns spin garden fantasies.
courtly scattered ink unfurls hanging scrolls,
porcelain pieces glint, bamboo writing jars.
painted eye bags droop on worn, weary jowls,
a subject’s furtive glance betrays squalid homes.
two-note buses lead to neon road mouths-
grand intersections, korean mall scenes,
wafting hot pot steam, karaoke screens.

 

 

beijing fun/hutongs

Jonathan Chan

 

sprawling urban sets bleed on display screens,
ruffling plastic cords, glinting frame of red.
promises are made - public art displays,
sculptured picassos, three-floor high cafes,
bookshelves by daylight, indoor garden cage,
beijing stock exchange, western facade made.
narrow passageways lead to hutong streets,
eyes cannot forget, dissonant and clean.
crumbling artifice, fibreglass scaffold,
crackling concrete drill, roadside xiangqi shift.
temple playgrounds hide lively crayon scrawls.
museums recall ‘essence of beijing’:
average workers’ hymns marching forth onstage,
creative writing troops, visual art enclaves.

 

 

 

 

Sunday Hutong 

Chris Nash

 

 

The bars snooze

Sleeping off Yanjing booze,

Over the rolling waves of roofs

A black cat glides

Yawning in sudden warmth;

Red arm 红箍儿 / honggur

Doze in nests of shadows

composed;

Adorned in her original face

Grandma shuffles and shops

For  小葱 / xiaocong green as her heart

Root tips shining white;

In orange robes

The carers of the 公厕所 / gongcesuo

Sweep clean the day’s soul;

From the kitchens

The 袅袅 / niaoniao of  

The people’s 面包 / míanbao rising.

 

In sleepless 西单 / Xidan

The atms yawn emptily.

 

 

Notes:

Yanjing - the favourite Beijing beer.

红箍儿 - honggur - the red armbands who keep an eye on public areas

小葱 - xiaocong - the green and white spring onions popular in Beijing cuisine

公厕所 - gongcesuo - the public toilets plentifully provided in the Hutong

袅袅 - niaoniao - to rise gently in spirals

面包 - mianbao - the beloved freshly steamed bread of the Beijingers

西单 - Xidan - Beijing's West End - a commercial district.

 

 

 

 

吃馅儿 - Chi xian’er

Chris Nash

 

 

‘Knock,knock’, on the block in history’s kitchen

The brew of a passing year and the new,

Psst, into the pot, the hand-pulled 拉面 / lamian;

The you thought you knew, that is not you.

 

Shops of mirrors that dress you in dreams

While desire simmers in the Xiao-chi steam,

Yet emptiness blooms among hutong hordes

To people the mind of a tender-rooted child.

 

Through the gulou-drumming twilight air

This season-cycle song of the mind’s eye

Flowers as 鸽哨  / geshao over the watching tower;

Below a red ribbon buds in her dusky hair- ‘fly’.

 

Grandma curls on a stool in Time’s alleyway,

eyes asking after the passing instant’s 京味 / jingwei.

 

 

Notes:

吃馅儿 - chi xian’er - Beijing dialect - to eat jaozi, the special dish of Chinese New Year.

拉面 - lamían - hand pulled noodles

小吃 - xiaochi - Beijing snacks

鸽哨 - geshao - the distinctive sound of whistles tied to the feet of Beijing pigeons

京味 - jingwei - the distinctive flavour of Beijing. However 精微 – also jingwei - means a subtle and profound knowledge.

 

 

 

 

Beijing summertime

Ana P.F.

 

 

this entire day is devoted to summer:

let me hold Beijing in my hands, well above the oven cliché

the city is a cracked heel, molten time poured over each crevasse

unto thee shall all flesh come, throb and pulsate in the subway

in the winter I wait for lust to glide down burst persimmons,

but I am best suited to come upon this season’s cornucopia

yielding under my fingertips

before a warning sprouts from the grocer: 美女请不要捏水果1

before I reply: but can you ensure ripeness, can you guarantee sweetness?

can you promise it will drip down, leave a stain?

你扫我还是我扫你2

this entire day is devoted to summer:

the sun is a glazed potsherd fitted into our vertebrae

and we wind up the gardener to prune the lotus and give us the offerings

I devour the seedpods that remind me of my father’s heart,

I wander the hutong like a vagrant madwoman,

just to hear the wind sing, just to catch

a glimpse of God as a scarlet anemometer, laboriously rotating,

besieged by Beijing birds flying in swift circles, casting shadows upon

washed-out community slogans elongating into oblivion:

早签早搬早受益不签不搬不得利3,不让老买人吃亏一把尺子量到底4

Beijing as a kaleidoscope of midsummer languor:

garlands of laughs from a terrace, empty crates of Arctic Ocean

bellies like burnished spheres, bodies spilling over the car seats

flannel-clad elders by their lintels and kaidangku drying over cables

the whirring of my brain over musings that know not of seasons,

will this be my time of plenitude?

 

 

1 Madam, please don’t pinch the fruit

2 Do I scan you or do you scan me?

3 Sign early, move early, reap the benefits early. Don’t sign, don’t move, don’t profit.

4 Don’t let good humble people suffer losses, always adhere to the standards.

 

 

 

 

Little Snow

Simon Shieh

 

 

I will try not to say too much. There was a man so fat you could draw every province he’d ever drank red wine in on his stomach. He’d been to Argentina. He’d feasted on the beef of the Gods. But look, I’ve done it — I’ve filled my mouth with so many words I can no longer taste them. I was sitting next to the slender man who whispered things into the fat man’s ear. I was trying to eat a frog with two sticks. Southern China was tiptoeing through a warm autumn, leaves unfazed. There was, of course, red wine. At times the fat man would open his mouth to say something and everyone would empty the hand they used to raise their glass. I will not say that I despised this man. There was also lamb being ripped dead off sticks by large teeth. The teeth were those of poets. No one has ever said, poets are people too, without a dead body to stand over. I put the glass into my mouth. I must not say too much. The slender man poured the fat man a taste of wine and then gripped the bottle to his chest. I had never seen the inside of a great poet’s mouth before—the tongue so raw, yet unafraid. Here, the Yangtze River squirms out of its muddy clothes. The weight of dynasties, fat as an upper lip that everyone calls stiff. I’m eating my second bowl of fried rice because the alcohol is turning into something angry in my stomach. The fat man is interested in no one but the only woman at the table. She drinks only in the company of esteemed writers. Her name is Little Snow. Her dress is pink as the cheeks of a girl who has been caught writing poetry. Little Snow is being reminded that this is an occasion for revelry. Little Snow is being told to drink but she is not being told what to say. I’m trying not to say too much. I am a poet, too, after all. The fat man is whispering something important to Little Snow. Her face is made of wax. The fat man touches her arm—her arm melts. The slender man raises his glass and we stand to drink. Little Snow does not stand but drinks. Little Snow has probably never put both of her forearms on the dinner table before. The teeth of the poets are bleeding blocks of liver into soup. There are eggs on the table that are older than me. Little Snow is older than me. Women have a story that begins with an age, I know this; I don’t know Little Snow’s age. The waitress’s hands are large enough to hold a lamb down by the back of its neck as she straddles its back. Women have a story that ends with a fraction. A fraction is a whole number that cannot tell you what it is without telling you what fractures it. I didn’t hear the fire die under the hotpot. I heard none of what the fat man said to Little Snow but I could see his lips peeling the skin from a poem. Women have a story that is never told in China. China is a country with over 5,000 years of history. I cannot tell you what Little Snow was staring at as the fat man asked for the check, but I can tell you that some people believe history could not have been otherwise. As we stood up to leave, a fat hand pulled Little Snow around the table, her high heels steady as knifepoints. Like a flock of birds, we kicked the bones to the parking lot and lit cigarettes. The fat man’s car door cut Little Snow in half as it closed. We stood there talking about history as his car left—how it clouds everything we see until we see it—the smoke billowing from our lips, every word on fire.

 

 

 

 

On the Way to Work

Wenfeng Tong

     

In the early morning,
I saw a pig
on the way to work.
The pig slept among the grass,
while I hurried past.
I ignored the pig,
and the pig didn't notice me.